Blast From The Past: Come On Home, Mozart!

It was another sunny and warm day (80's) in Austria as we rolled down the railway from Vienna to Mozart's hometown of Salzburg, passing through the bucolic Danube Valley to the foot of the Alps. While Vienna is a major city like San Francisco, Salzburg is definitely a tourist-only destination. Like Italian towns, its narrow, shop-lined streets connect "platz" or plazas with open-air dining, and it has a magnificent Baroque cathedral (as well as some pretty nifty "lesser" churches).

We sustained our sightseeing forays with a late afternoon pasty fix and some coffee, and then had a late dinner at a roof top garden restaurant as the full moon began to rise.  Most diners had already made their way home or to their hotels long before we closed the place down.

My wife’s application to become a Fairy Tale Princess must be receiving favorable review. Our hotel in Salzburg has a lovely pink decor with a canopied bed and a "star field" of lights over the sleeping area in the room.

Tomorrow we're off on "Bob's Special Sound of Music Tour" of the countryside. No doubt the locals are continually amazed at tourists' fascination with that 1965 schmaltzy Julie Andrews movie, but are happy that it means added Euros to their economy.

(Excerpted and adapted from the trip blog written by Dick Jordan during his month-long visit to Europe in September of 2006.  Another installment will appear on Tales Told From The Road next week.)